Muscle boys and Eric André welcome The Righteous Gemstones back for a second season

It’s been two years since HBO debuted the first season of The Righteous Gemstones, a period that’s seen our collective need for some kind of spiritual reassurance—and the deeply exploitable profitability of same—only skyrocket. So thank God, or whoever, for the show’s upcoming second season, which the network is promoting with a new trailer released online today.

In addition to lightly touching on the whole COVID thing, the show’s new trailer also steers into the vibe of that other HBO dramedy about a dysfunctional family of uber-rich assholes, as Danny McBride’s Jesse openly plots to inherit the wealth and power of family patriarch Eli (John Goodman), while siblings Kelvin (Adam DeVine) and Judy (Edi Patterson) plot against him—for a value of
“plotting” that mostly involves criticizing his decision to bust out a thoroughly pre-pandemic “Bye, Felicia” meme.

Meanwhile, Kelvin is also rolling forward with “God’s Army,” i.e., a burly crew of muscular boys/muscle men that Eli doesn’t seem to approve of, despite their clearly god-given ability to break cinder blocks with their elbows. Jesse is also attempting to forge some kind of alliance with Eric André’s Lyle Lissons, who runs the Gemstone’s rival family of extremely profitable megachurches in the American West.

All that, and we get to see Tim Baltz’s BJ “shake that cake,” and John Goodman looking sadder than anyone has ever looked on a rollercoaster, and a shot of Jesse and his wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman) trying to outwit COVID by hugging each other through a big plastic sheet.

The Righteous Gemstones was created by McBride; the show’s first season was directed by a number of his regular collaborators, including Halloween director David Gordon Green and Jody Hill. The series is set to return (joy, joy, joy hopefully intact somewhere down in its heart) to HBO on January 9.